


a guest at the hall

by Zsazsa4



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 19th Century, Haunted Houses, M/M, a christmas ghost story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:26:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27051151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zsazsa4/pseuds/Zsazsa4
Summary: Christmas 1846. Harry Goodsir has received an invitation to spend Christmas at an isolated manor house in --shire. How the host has come into possession of the house is somewhat mysterious, there are strange things afoot with a curiously lifelike landscape drawing in the library, and the snow is falling fast and early.
Relationships: Cornelius Hickey/Sgt Solomon Tozer, Harry D. S. Goodsir/Cornelius Hickey/Sgt Solomon Tozer
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	a guest at the hall

A man unacquainted with the landscape found in the east might think it dull; dispiriting; flat. And in fact Sixhills was quite undeserving of the name, being set in miles and miles of broad, wet fen, shades of grey, brown and occasionally green. Conceivably there might have been six patches of slightly elevated ground, but they would not register to most people as a hill, and the house sat exposed and battered. Nonetheless Sixhills is something strikingly other than beautiful when the wind howls in from the North Sea, and there is nothing in its path to give pause to whatever it might bring.

Harry Goodsir was unused to such unvariegated, unmitigated flatness. True, he had been in residence at the University for approaching two years now, but then College was a brick sanctum, walled off from this bleakness extending to the edge of the sea. It bore in on him closely as he sat in the deserted compartment of the tiny branch line train. Although it was still light, mist sat heavily, undispersed on the ground so that he might almost have vanished from humanity entirely, rather than taking only two trains. 

It was impossible for him to describe the country in positive terms; rather it seemed total lack, although he took pains to remind himself that he did not have an eye for it and that to someone he did it might be - he could not think what. Lovely was not apposite; neither was comforting. In winter, it presented an aspect at once wild and dreary. At least the carriage on the branch line had been approaching warmth. He could not say the same of the railway station, exposed to the wind and with a pane of glass missing in the waiting room, furnished with hard wooden benches and otherwise entirely empty.

‘Mr Goodsir? For Sixhills?’ A man said brusquely, half looming into the door of the waiting room. Hard to make out exactly what he looked like beneath a quantity of woollens.

‘Yes,’ he said, hurrying to get his luggage.

‘How long have you been sat in here for, I was just outside.’ The man did not wait for an answer but proceeded to the brougham, slinging Goodsir’s bag inside with alarming force and bundling him in after it.

Sixhills was not at all an imposing building; a pleasant red-brick manor house of modest size in the Queen Anne style that had escaped any classicising fad of that century. Had it been nestled in green hills, orchard gardens, and the rolling countryside it might have been quite a bucolic idyll of English plenty. Here, however, it protruded from acres of flat, green-grey marsh. Its isolation struck Goodsir as peculiar, with no farm tenants to be seen, nor any livestock which might have replaced them.

Indeed, the owner of Sixhills presented a somewhat alarming aspect himself. Curiously like a little doll, in impeccably fitted and brushed clothes, but with an unwholesome air - all of that lank reddish hair. He had never been introduced to Mr Hickey personally, was there at the behest of a mutual acquaintance who had thought Goodsir might make a welcome addition to the wintering party. ‘You’ll be interested to see the library,’ he had said, ‘a few good things in there. Quite minor and very parochial, of course, engravings by Robert Strange, some odd reproductions of Hooke, that sort of thing, but worth the journey. And the hospitality is - shall we say fulsome? Not always quite the thing, but then we can’t all be born to it.’

‘Ah, Mr Goodsir,’ Hickey said now, ‘you are a little beforehand - I’m afraid we have no one to acquaint us. Funny times they keep on that branch line.’ This appeared to be a try at a pleasantry. ‘I hope your journey hasn’t been too uncomfortable - raw weather, isn’t it? And that Mr Tozer here was decent company.’

‘I sat him inside,’ the man - Tozer - said. ‘It’s bastard cold tonight, and snow’s coming on.’ Not a man-servant then, but unclear what his function in fact was. Some indeterminate hanger-on, a distant cousin or poor relation?

'Now, now,' Hickey said. 'Watch it in front of our guest. I'm sure he doesn't like that kind of language.'

Goodsir wondered if he were misreading those accents; but no, probably not, certainly they were _not quite the thing_ , and he moved on to more entertaining speculation as to how his host had come into possession. Trade, probably - railways? Textiles? A natural son deposited clear across the country? Certainly the man was not the stolid, newly prosperous bourgeois he had expected, was also much younger than he had expected. His obvious wish to be hospitable was unpleasantly close to ingratiation. Still, Goodsir reminded himself, an improvement on the Christmas company he might find at College, almost deserted at this time of year bar the more desiccated, lonely dons. He could but hope he had a decade or so before that fate should descend upon him.

He realised, then, that he hardly knew what to do with his coat and his bag; he had assumed that Tozer - Mr Tozer - would bring it up, but clearly that was not exactly his role here. Tozer had shrugged out of his overcoat, laid it over the the dark wood banister of the stairs with hat, scarf and gloves on top of it. Even out from under all of that he was a big man, stocky - and then Hickey caught Goodsir's eye and he looked away quickly, hoping that he was not blushing at being caught but only red from the cold.

‘Just leave it all there, Mr Goodsir,’ Hickey said, amused and knowing. ‘One of the maids will take it up to your room. Have some refreshment in the library before bed.’

The library was, in its details, ordinary. A large room, plushly furnished, with a small dining table and sideboard as well as chairs and an ugly sofa, overstuffed and upholstered in a too-busy brocade. In its entirety, however, it was much stranger, irregularly sized and shaped - Goodsir could not fathom how its mad corners fit against the corridor on the one side and the flat front of the house on the other. The house was lit by oil lamps, and the corners of the library receded into peculiar shadow. The way the table was set up seemed odd to him, as well - no chairs on the side facing away from the windows. But he supposed they liked the view when it was light.

A hearty but sensible cold supper had been laid on. It was clearly intended for more than three men: beef and tongue sandwiches, oyster patties, slices of cold chicken, jam tarts, a dish of apples and figs and a seed cake. All was almost in order, other than the profusion of food on which they hardly made a dent, although they each ate determinedly, and the sense of disquiet which the architecture of the library produced in Goodsir.

Mr Hickey was evidently proud of the peculiar room, and showed him with great care the collections here when he had come into possession: great dusty tracts of theology and divinity mostly, but with quite a credible selection of natural philosophy and mathematics. Hickey’s own acquisitions were mostly novels, with some voyage narratives and works of political philosophy, areas where Goodsir had less interest.

‘And the jewel of the lot,’ Hickey said, ‘the drawing of the house. Done just after Sixhills was built. Not someone you’ll ever have heard of; but a remarkable piece, isn’t it?’ He had to tiptoe to point it out, leaned in precariously just a little too close to where Goodsir sat on the sofa. But then he was short, and there was nothing about the art or the books to indicate that Hickey shared those tastes. He had as always to reassure himself: neither of them could have realised he looked perhaps a touch too long, earlier.

To Goodsir the drawing looked rather dull, once he had hurriedly extricated himself and stood up. Competent, yes, a black and white ink-drawing of Sixhills’ frontage from some distance away, the paper a little yellowed. An impressive show of technique but to his eye - admittedly imperfect - workmanlike. The house had been captured thus in spring, surrounded by flowering hawthorn bushes. And perhaps it was wittier, less of a formal exercise, than he had thought - a small figure was exiting out of a side door, the kitchen perhaps. Or entering? It was difficult to tell.

‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘there is something. A lovely piece.’ Then, quite mortified, he yawned, not loudly but undeniably.

Hickey laughed. ‘It’s a long journey. Your room is just up the stairs out of the library - second door. Come back if you can’t find it.’

As he climbed the stairs in the dark he was transported into another time, another place. They were the dark wood steps of his childhood, carelessly covered with a carpet that tacked up and slipped at the edges, scuffed and battered by him and his brothers. Although he knew quite well that could not be possible, it was as if he were in both places at once, the memory of how it felt to walk up such high steps as such a small boy at the same time as his adult, steadier tread, the bone-deep naturalness of one ghosting the unfamiliarity of the other. And as he lay in the bed, he knew somehow that the ice forming on the inside of the windows was the same, obscurely, as the ice from his childhood, that in the morning one of the maids would be in with a spade of hot coals for the fire.

The illusion vanished the next morning when he dressed, shivering in the icy bedroom, and made his way to a room of unclear purpose, but where Hickey and Tozer were sat at breakfast. Simply a bright east-facing room, with a crackling fire and a view out onto the blanket of snow that now surrounded the house. With, as before, a spread on the table: toast, muffins, butter, marmalade, poached eggs and ham, broiled mackerel and whiting. As they had in the library last night, they were sat in a tableau made for perfect viewing from the window, Hickey at the head of the table and Tozer to his right, with his back to Goodsir.

‘Ah, Mr Goodsir,’ Hickey said pleasantly. ‘I’m afraid we have some bad news. Given the snow, I doubt any of the other guests will be able to make it up to the house. The branch line isn’t too sturdy at the best of times. They threw it up and can’t work out how to make it pay.’’

‘Are you sure the snow will settle? It seems warm for snow, and early - perhaps the line may be open quite soon, if it melts.’

‘Worse, that,’ Tozer said, not looking up from his food, nearly finished. ‘Ground’s frozen solid, there’s nowhere for any of it to go, the water just sits. Rails’ll be swamped rate we’re going.’

‘Oh. Well, I’m terribly sorry - I know I was invited by one of your guests, and I’d hate to impose -’

‘Don’t worry about that. We shall get to know each other rather better, and enjoy it, I’m sure.’

‘Nowhere else for you to go anyway,’ Tozer said. ‘I shan’t be able to take you all the way back down if the roads flood, the horse could break a leg.’

‘And you expect the roads to flood, I imagine,’ Goodsir said. This man really was inexplicably rude, bordering on offensive.

‘Should think so,’ Tozer said, impassive.

‘I’ll give you the run of the house, Mr Goodsir,’ Hickey said, ‘and of the grounds. We dine at six, not being very fashionable; and there’ll be food at midday, should you want it. Both served in here, I don’t see any need to open up the dining room for three of us. I’m afraid I like to read the newspapers at breakfast, and I’m rather set in my ways, being a solitary eccentric as I am. But I should be quite happy for you to read one also.’

Goodsir was surprised by the proliferation of publications, everything from _The Standard_ to _The Northern Star_ to _Bentley’s Miscellany_ , all a week or so out of date. Mr Hickey’s political leanings remained opaque to him. He selected _The Times_ and sat down to fill his plate, but before he could Tozer interrupted as he got up to leave.

‘Don't go poking down any staircases or cellars. Foundation's are soaked, flooded right through, it was never right ground for building on. Might not find you again.’

After breakfast he went out for a walk on his own. The snow was rather comforting; still untrodden, it muffled his footsteps, deadened sound. He walked for some miles, some hours; the sky was clear, crisp and blue, although it was bitterly cold. Perhaps he had been wrong about the snow melting. The house receded into the distance but was always just visible behind him, no slope, hills or trees to hide it. He was obscurely troubled as he trudged back, and he did not realise why until the front of the house came more clearly into view. He had not come across anyone or anything on his way; no houses, no people, no livestock, no birds in the sky. The only plants he had seen, even, were the bare hawthorn bushes around the house, and the only animal the horse that had drawn the brougham. When he walked, though, he had the same peculiar sensation of absolute familiarity in his legs, his feet, of knowing intimately the place he was walking, so that he could not even summon the memory as an image but only as a feeling. But he had certainly never been here before; had not been within even fifty miles of the place before.

And then, after the midday meal, which he had taken on his own, he thought perhaps the library again. He had not really been able to look at it properly the night before. He found his way to it after some wrong turns, seeing not a single person on his way. The emptiness of the house was very strange; with even the most well-run staff you would usually run into a dozy under-housemaid. The rooms were all open and maintained, none boarded off, but curiously purposeless: all slight variations on the same drawing room with no signs of use, but no dust or neglect either. Square and symmetrical, with the furniture all arranged to point out at the windows, it seemed rather like a luxurious and impossibly large doll’s house. He made himself laugh at the idea of the impossibly large child who would play with it.

Its order and perfection gave him second thoughts about entering the library; it didn’t seem quite right on his own, had so clearly been Hickey’s domain, much more so than the rest of the house. But then, had he not been given the entire run of the house and its grounds? But that permission would not encompass anything so intimate as, say, a bedroom, and to go into the library unaccompanied seemed almost more of an intrusion. 

The door was half-open, strange as it had always been closed before. Goodsir peered round the side, silently - he knew that stealth did not reflect particularly well on him, that he should have announced his presence, but he was compelled, somehow.

His mouth fell open. On one of the sofas at an angle to the door was a sight he could never have expected, but did not look away from. That surly Tozer was lying there, almost entirely naked, with just his boots on his feet and trousers and drawers shoved down around his ankles. His prick lay half-hard against his thigh, and although Goodsir quickly glanced away he began, to his horror, to stir himself. And such a body - broad through the chest and shoulders, with a dip into the narrow hips, his chest and stomach showing only a patchy scattering of light hair. And God, what a prick he had.

Tozer began to stroke himself idly, shamelessly, to full hardness; Goodsir’s face was horribly, impossibly hot. And still he didn’t look away. Propped up on one elbow as he coaxed himself up to full hardness - and what a prick he had, thick and flushed - the muscles in his arm and stomach stood out. Displaying himself, deliberately, had Goodsir not known that he thought himself unobserved. Goodsir swallowed, mouth wet, and felt hotly ashamed as he stared at the line of Tozer's body, the curve of his back and his arse. Tozer began touching himself in earnest, the motion of his hand from the base of his cock nestled in a thick thatch of hair up to the tip quickening. He swiped his thumb over the head and the sound became slicker, wetter, cock half-hidden by the movements of his broad hand. Goodsir wanted desperately to run his hands over him, kiss him, lick him, suck at him, every inch of skin - and God, so much skin. The muscles under the skin of his thighs flexed, legs falling open. His breathing changed, coming faster, huffed out through his nose, with the occasional grunt or unsteady breath in. And then, brows knit together, eyes shut, overtaken by pleasure, he spent up himself, thick white pearls of it on his belly.

Goodsir couldn’t help it, gasped, and Tozer sat up and looked around - but by then he was gone. He hurried away as quietly as he could, terribly undignified with his cock achingly hard in his trousers. He could hardly comprehend it - in the middle of the day, in the cold, with such a lack of privacy, concealment - with more than a touch of showing off. 

He escaped into what must be some sort of orchard garden and collapsed onto a bench beneath the bare trees, branches heavy with snow. The image returned to his mind again and again, Tozer almost entirely naked in that cold, pale light. And, above him, the drawing, but not as it had been the first time he saw it. Instead, in the foreground, there was a shirt, waistcoat and trousers lying on the grass, and a pair of men’s boots - all his own.

**Author's Note:**

> Very, very influenced by M.R. James. Also indebted to Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, although I'm not sure she'd be best pleased at the uses I've put it to.
> 
> [tumblr](https://roaringgirl.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/Milk__punch)


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